A most excellent piece over at Tech Central, so full of brilliant gems I couldn't edit it. I am running most of it..............but I suggest you read it all. It sums up beautifully the schism between the left and the right

"Thinking (T)When I make a decision, I
like to find the basic truth or principle to be applied, regardless of the
specific situation involved. I like to analyze pros and cons, and then be
consistent and logical in deciding. I try to be impersonal, so I won't let my
personal wishes -- or other people's wishes -- influence me...

Feeling (F)I believe I can make the best decisions by
weighing what people care about and the points-of-view of persons involved in a
situation. I am concerned with values and what is the best for the people
involved. I like to do whatever will establish or maintain harmony. In my
relationships, I appear caring, warm, and tactful."-- The
Myers and Briggs Foundation, adapted from Charles R. Martin, Looking at
Type: The Fundamentals

In my experience, libertarians and collectivists
often talk past one another. Libertarians believe that collectivists are not
thinking, while collectivists believe that libertarians are not
feeling.

I view economics as training in thinking. That does
not mean that you lose your empathy with people. It means, however, that you pay
attention to the consequences of
policies, regardless of their motives. Or, as Alan Blinder put it, economists
have Hard
Heads, Soft Hearts.

"Why do people who claim to be concerned for the poor
so often support or go along with policies that are obviously and predictably
bad for society and especially the poor? Why do they support government
schooling, antidevelopment land-use policies, rail transit projects, and
policies to discourage the use of the private automobile?... atrocious policies
such as the war on drugs can be enacted and cheered and can persist. Even though
Republicans supposedly care about freedom and Democrats supposedly care about
"the little guy," the politicians do nothing to abate the
policy."

Klein says that part of the answer is that "we fancy
the notion of communing with the whole." This desire to feel part of a single
large clan or tribe is what Klein refers to as The People's Romance. Klein
suggests that collectivist policies such as Social Security or public schools
serve the same function as ritual tribal dances. By the same token, following
Thomas Szasz, he suggests that the war on drugs serves the same function as
tribal scapegoating. I would add that crusades against tobacco, fast food, or
Wal-mart also can be seen in terms of tribal scapegoating.

The Right
to Health Care?

Those with the collectivist feeling often speak of a
"right" to health care. But in The New Libertarian, Bruce
McQuain points out, "you have no moral right to demand that a doctor, nurse, or
other health care worker provide their time or talents to you without their
permission or at their expense."

I believe that a collectivist would argue that the
right to health care does not impose such untoward obligations on health care
providers. Rather, it is the obligation of "all of us" to provide resources to
anyone who needs health care.

As a thinker, however, I can raise some questions
about this. Suppose that Bill Gates would rather spend his money improving the
health of Africans than on adding to poor Americans' already extravagant
health care spending. From a collectivist feeling perspective, however, he could
be viewed as violating Americans' right to health care.

Here is another example. I have never had heart
trouble. My lipid profile is good. My EKG's have always been normal. I can
exercise as much as I want without untoward shortness of breath. But suppose
that I decide that I would like to see a cardiologist, "just because." Do I have
a right to do so?

n a capitalist society, I have every right to see a
cardiologist, and either spend my own money or try to convince my health
insurance company to pay for it. But from a collectivist perspective, my "right"
to demand that "all of us" pay for the cardiologist would seem more
problematic.

The collectivist feelers base their appeal for a
right to health care on the presumption that health care is necessary. However,
as I have learned by reading the work of economists such as John
Wennberg -- and as I have pointed out here and here -- much health
care is in fact discretionary. By that I do not mean unnecessary, but still
above and beyond the sort of acute care or basic services which are called to
mind when the phrase "right to health care" is invoked.

In fact, if a "right to health care" were defined
solely in terms of necessary care, enforcing the right to health care would mean
dramatically scaling back government health care for all Americans, including
the poor and the uninsured. In practice, it would instead become a political
piggy bank, with everyone from plastic surgeons to massage therapists to witch
doctors insisting that their services be incorporated into the "right to health
care."

Pessimism
or Optimism?

Will the collectivist feeling lead to the inevitable
enlargement of the state and a loss of the dynamism and individual rights that
libertarians cherish? I can offer one big reason for pessimism and one big
reason for optimism.

My biggest reason for pessimism is the state of our
educational establishment. To put it simply, too many educators see their
mission as teaching young people to feel, not to think. How are young people
supposed to learn to think, if the opposite behavior is what is being modeled in
primary school, secondary school, and college?

When I was in college, there were not nearly as many
"feeling" courses as there are today. Courses in literature, social science, and
science were analytical, not moralistic. Today, the catalogs for my daughters'
colleges are filled with courses designed to indoctrinate rather than to
enlighten. A young person could be forgiven for getting the impression that
going to college means spending four years at a propaganda camp. Even more
depressing is the thought that a young person could also be forgiven for going
through four years of college without even realizing that it is little more than
a propaganda camp.

"in some sense the Internet and blogging are not only
useful tools for us libertarians, but in and of themselves are inherently
libertarian vehicles. Certainly libertarian hero F. A. Hayek would recognize the
chaos of the Internet and the blogosphere immediately. For a good libertarian,
chaos is beautiful, and certainly the blogosphere qualifies as chaotic. The
Internet today is perhaps the single most libertarian institution on the planet.
It is utterly without hierarchy, being essentially just one layer deep and a
billion URL's wide. Even those who try to impose order, such as Google, do so
with no mandate beyond their utility to individual users."

I always felt that Howard Dean's Internet campaign
was an oxymoron: a libertarian means to collectivist ends. I think that this
fundamental contradiction never got resolved, as the internal conflict between
the net-heads and the traditionalists dogged the campaign.

If Marshall McLuhan was right when he said "The
Medium is the Message," then surely the message of the Internet is libertarian.
The Internet's engineering architecture is designed to minimize the number of
decisions made centrally and to maximize the flexibility of individual users.
Given the current architecture, no equivalent of the "broadcast flag" regulation
that the FCC attempted to issue to all manufacturers of digital television sets
could be promulgated to the Internet.

The government structure of the Internet, too, is
highly libertarian. Most of the critical work consists of defining standards,
and these are hammered out by ad hoc engineering task forces on a "just-in-time"
basis. When I first heard Vint Cerf proselytize about the Internet in 1993, what
sold me was not the network structure. It was the political structure. I
remember thinking to myself, "My goodness, this is how government really ought
to work. When a problem comes up, a task force gets together and proposes a
solution. When the solution is adopted, the task force dissolves. How
refreshing!"

To me, it seemed that Moveon.org and other
manifestations of collectivist politics on the Internet never transcended
preaching-to-the-converted rhetoric. To this day, I still find the Left
predominantly concerned with manipulating voters rather than making a reasoned
case. The notion that a Berkeley linguistics professor, George Lakoff, has the
keys to unlocking the hearts and minds of the population, surely must be one of
the most laughable delusions in modern political history.

In fact, populist resentment of elites, while a
volatile force, is another potential reason for optimism. Even in Europe , the recent winds have been blowing against the
sort of elitism that George Lakoff represents. It appears that European populism
incorporates an attachment to collectivist benefits combined with hostility
toward capitalism and free trade. Nonetheless, there is something vaguely
comforting about the fact that French and Dutch are no more trusting than I am
in the self-assured bureaucratic managers and intellectuals.

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Collectivism vs Individualism......Feeling vs Thinking

A most excellent piece over at Tech Central, so full of brilliant gems I couldn't edit it. I am running most of it..............but I suggest you read it all. It sums up beautifully the schism between the left and the right

"Thinking (T)When I make a decision, I
like to find the basic truth or principle to be applied, regardless of the
specific situation involved. I like to analyze pros and cons, and then be
consistent and logical in deciding. I try to be impersonal, so I won't let my
personal wishes -- or other people's wishes -- influence me...

Feeling (F)I believe I can make the best decisions by
weighing what people care about and the points-of-view of persons involved in a
situation. I am concerned with values and what is the best for the people
involved. I like to do whatever will establish or maintain harmony. In my
relationships, I appear caring, warm, and tactful."-- The
Myers and Briggs Foundation, adapted from Charles R. Martin, Looking at
Type: The Fundamentals

In my experience, libertarians and collectivists
often talk past one another. Libertarians believe that collectivists are not
thinking, while collectivists believe that libertarians are not
feeling.

I view economics as training in thinking. That does
not mean that you lose your empathy with people. It means, however, that you pay
attention to the consequences of
policies, regardless of their motives. Or, as Alan Blinder put it, economists
have Hard
Heads, Soft Hearts.

"Why do people who claim to be concerned for the poor
so often support or go along with policies that are obviously and predictably
bad for society and especially the poor? Why do they support government
schooling, antidevelopment land-use policies, rail transit projects, and
policies to discourage the use of the private automobile?... atrocious policies
such as the war on drugs can be enacted and cheered and can persist. Even though
Republicans supposedly care about freedom and Democrats supposedly care about
"the little guy," the politicians do nothing to abate the
policy."

Klein says that part of the answer is that "we fancy
the notion of communing with the whole." This desire to feel part of a single
large clan or tribe is what Klein refers to as The People's Romance. Klein
suggests that collectivist policies such as Social Security or public schools
serve the same function as ritual tribal dances. By the same token, following
Thomas Szasz, he suggests that the war on drugs serves the same function as
tribal scapegoating. I would add that crusades against tobacco, fast food, or
Wal-mart also can be seen in terms of tribal scapegoating.

The Right
to Health Care?

Those with the collectivist feeling often speak of a
"right" to health care. But in The New Libertarian, Bruce
McQuain points out, "you have no moral right to demand that a doctor, nurse, or
other health care worker provide their time or talents to you without their
permission or at their expense."

I believe that a collectivist would argue that the
right to health care does not impose such untoward obligations on health care
providers. Rather, it is the obligation of "all of us" to provide resources to
anyone who needs health care.

As a thinker, however, I can raise some questions
about this. Suppose that Bill Gates would rather spend his money improving the
health of Africans than on adding to poor Americans' already extravagant
health care spending. From a collectivist feeling perspective, however, he could
be viewed as violating Americans' right to health care.

Here is another example. I have never had heart
trouble. My lipid profile is good. My EKG's have always been normal. I can
exercise as much as I want without untoward shortness of breath. But suppose
that I decide that I would like to see a cardiologist, "just because." Do I have
a right to do so?

n a capitalist society, I have every right to see a
cardiologist, and either spend my own money or try to convince my health
insurance company to pay for it. But from a collectivist perspective, my "right"
to demand that "all of us" pay for the cardiologist would seem more
problematic.

The collectivist feelers base their appeal for a
right to health care on the presumption that health care is necessary. However,
as I have learned by reading the work of economists such as John
Wennberg -- and as I have pointed out here and here -- much health
care is in fact discretionary. By that I do not mean unnecessary, but still
above and beyond the sort of acute care or basic services which are called to
mind when the phrase "right to health care" is invoked.

In fact, if a "right to health care" were defined
solely in terms of necessary care, enforcing the right to health care would mean
dramatically scaling back government health care for all Americans, including
the poor and the uninsured. In practice, it would instead become a political
piggy bank, with everyone from plastic surgeons to massage therapists to witch
doctors insisting that their services be incorporated into the "right to health
care."

Pessimism
or Optimism?

Will the collectivist feeling lead to the inevitable
enlargement of the state and a loss of the dynamism and individual rights that
libertarians cherish? I can offer one big reason for pessimism and one big
reason for optimism.

My biggest reason for pessimism is the state of our
educational establishment. To put it simply, too many educators see their
mission as teaching young people to feel, not to think. How are young people
supposed to learn to think, if the opposite behavior is what is being modeled in
primary school, secondary school, and college?

When I was in college, there were not nearly as many
"feeling" courses as there are today. Courses in literature, social science, and
science were analytical, not moralistic. Today, the catalogs for my daughters'
colleges are filled with courses designed to indoctrinate rather than to
enlighten. A young person could be forgiven for getting the impression that
going to college means spending four years at a propaganda camp. Even more
depressing is the thought that a young person could also be forgiven for going
through four years of college without even realizing that it is little more than
a propaganda camp.

"in some sense the Internet and blogging are not only
useful tools for us libertarians, but in and of themselves are inherently
libertarian vehicles. Certainly libertarian hero F. A. Hayek would recognize the
chaos of the Internet and the blogosphere immediately. For a good libertarian,
chaos is beautiful, and certainly the blogosphere qualifies as chaotic. The
Internet today is perhaps the single most libertarian institution on the planet.
It is utterly without hierarchy, being essentially just one layer deep and a
billion URL's wide. Even those who try to impose order, such as Google, do so
with no mandate beyond their utility to individual users."

I always felt that Howard Dean's Internet campaign
was an oxymoron: a libertarian means to collectivist ends. I think that this
fundamental contradiction never got resolved, as the internal conflict between
the net-heads and the traditionalists dogged the campaign.

If Marshall McLuhan was right when he said "The
Medium is the Message," then surely the message of the Internet is libertarian.
The Internet's engineering architecture is designed to minimize the number of
decisions made centrally and to maximize the flexibility of individual users.
Given the current architecture, no equivalent of the "broadcast flag" regulation
that the FCC attempted to issue to all manufacturers of digital television sets
could be promulgated to the Internet.

The government structure of the Internet, too, is
highly libertarian. Most of the critical work consists of defining standards,
and these are hammered out by ad hoc engineering task forces on a "just-in-time"
basis. When I first heard Vint Cerf proselytize about the Internet in 1993, what
sold me was not the network structure. It was the political structure. I
remember thinking to myself, "My goodness, this is how government really ought
to work. When a problem comes up, a task force gets together and proposes a
solution. When the solution is adopted, the task force dissolves. How
refreshing!"

To me, it seemed that Moveon.org and other
manifestations of collectivist politics on the Internet never transcended
preaching-to-the-converted rhetoric. To this day, I still find the Left
predominantly concerned with manipulating voters rather than making a reasoned
case. The notion that a Berkeley linguistics professor, George Lakoff, has the
keys to unlocking the hearts and minds of the population, surely must be one of
the most laughable delusions in modern political history.

In fact, populist resentment of elites, while a
volatile force, is another potential reason for optimism. Even in Europe , the recent winds have been blowing against the
sort of elitism that George Lakoff represents. It appears that European populism
incorporates an attachment to collectivist benefits combined with hostility
toward capitalism and free trade. Nonetheless, there is something vaguely
comforting about the fact that French and Dutch are no more trusting than I am
in the self-assured bureaucratic managers and intellectuals.